They think they already understood.
Well, especially if it’s someone you know well… say… your wife… you definitely can know quite often. It won’t be 100% but it can be a high enough percent that you’d rather the sentence be over w a ~10% chance of misunderstanding than to have to keep listening to a sentence that you’ve already assumed the end of and are thinking of a reply to.
My wife thinks she knows what I’m going to say all the time, and she’s often wrong.
Assuming she has adhd, maybe she just could use some meds to help her tame her mind and just listen. But even off meds, if I was demonstrably wrong at a high frequency, that fact would at least leave me reserving my speculations on your point until I was more sure, or till you fully explained it.
It doesn’t matter. I’m going to ask a question to see if I understand. I’m paying way more attention than you think and trying to assemble a puzzle. If we do it interactively it’ll stick. If you just wanna talk, tho, tell me to stfu and I’ll let you go off.
I’m going to ask a question to see if I understand
It’s probably gonna be about something I was just about to explain before you cut me off lol
I’ve had to have several conversations with my wife about her not using a bad mental autofill.
So much of the time (especially with important conversations), she’s already decided what I’m saying within the first few words (of an entire conversation) and then the conversation gets way too long because it is very clear she’s not getting what I’m saying because she’s locked into her autofill. She’s gotten better over time, but man is it frustrating.
Yeah i have this problem with my partner. I say something innocuous, he creates a whole cinematic universe about what I meant with the sentence and refuses to adjust once I explain that he misunderstood. It’s absolutely tiring.
My Dad has a strong tendency to talk in circles, slowly working to his point like one of those penny rolling machines you used to see everywhere, and it drives me round the bend sometimes to the point where I end up having to prompt him to just get to the point
Is he also ADHD/ASD? Sometimes having to tell the whole story is like an OCD trait, you can’t just get to the point. The whole story has to be relayed because that’s how it exists in your brain.
The flip side is just giving someone the punch line or answer to a situation and getting frustrated that people haven’t reached the same conclusions as quickly as you have.
I dunno’, I also find a lot of people in technical/detail driven fields will often circle their thoughts. Not that they meander stories around over superfluous detail, but they literally repeat and refine specific statements or messages multiple times, sometimes even verbally.
This can easily appear as, “talking in circles” when all they’re doing is refining their statements for better accuracy. Sometimes, it’s literally circling back to clarify points that might not matter outside of doing the thing when people might simply be curious.
I realize a lot of these are mental disorders when they’re bad enough, but that’s my point: Talking in circles can mean many things. Maybe they just often talk about nuanced topics that need circling back to fully discuss and OP doesn’t like nuance.
Well, yes…that’s why I used conditional language “sometimes”. For some people this is normal to verbally rehash and refine an idea, and I’d think a prompt to get to the point would be successful and not problematic. For someone not neurotypical, this might create frustration or break up their ability to complete the story.
Like walking a path, but someone throws a branch across it. Now you’ve lost the path and maybe focus on that loss of direction, the branch, why is there a branch, did they really need to put the branch there, people are looking at me and I can’t deal with the branch…wait, I have to walk back down the path, pick it up, and try to find my way forward without this continuity I have in my head…
My dad and my wife begin telling their anecdote and it finally involves me in having a mental and emotional breakdown trying to figure put their point.
I used to fight them initially into telling the point in the few seconds to no avail. These days, I just tune in enough to listen every 10th word.
I sometimes finish the sentence for them to speed things along. It’s a bad habit of mine and I try not to be rude about it. Hopefully it just comes across as understanding and supportive rather than usurping the conversation.
It’s the second one, definitely the second one. I do it to though, so don’t feel bad. We just have to try to catch ourselves when we do it, and apologies and let them finish.
Surprise! My mom does this too, and the frustrating part is that she’s wrong about the second half of my sentence a LOT of the time. It ends up being rude and makes the conversation even longer because I have to waste additional time going, “No, I was going to say…” instead of simply finishing the sentence and continuing on.
So congratulations. You’re playing yourself. (I also have ADHD.)
So you have ADHD, but when you start a sentence you already know how it’s going to end? How do you do that?
everyone hates it, and no, you don’t know what people are about to say all the time.
I’m usually right about 60% of the time with strangers, though I’m intentionally not finishing the sentence aloud.
With friends and coworkers it’s usually that we’ve forgotten a common word somehow and just appreciate the other person remembering it for us.
it’s literal torture working in retail and having this happen. I just have to sit there with a fake smile plastered on my face, mind running a mile a minute and watching the line behind this person grow as they explain to me what I already figured out. On the plus side, outwardly I appear really patient to others!
I really hate when people interrupt what i’m saying before i finish my train of thought, so i try not to do that to others. Instead i just suffer in silence as they meander for what feels like forever and get increasingly annoyed at them
This only makes it a million times more frustrating when i wait for them to completely finish their points, and then get interrupted as soon as i start speaking.
Especially when they drag their point out for dramatic effect but the point was so glaringly obvious that it comes off as smug on top of the tonguebiting you have to do to not just torpedo their pathetic attempt at tension-building.
I LOVE spoiling speeches like this with one-word spoilers, or as close to it as possible. At least when it’s a negative speech or otherwise childish/blatantly obvious one.
Like if they’re going on and on describing the definition of a technical term and haven’t said the term, I’ll just blurt it out in hopes they stfu about the definition. Or similar things with philosophical topics.
It is conversationally abnormal and can be rude, but if you do it in an excited, engaged way like you want to talk to them and just want to get past those little moments faster, then I find only the true assholes who demand a conversation operate a certain way will get upset… and FUCK people who are rude to atypical people simply for being atypical.
Though that’s the way I’ve settled on “finishing other’s sentences.”: I just say something very short that should prompt them they can skip some details if I’m on the right track, not assume the details for them.
Hey, this is about ADHD and having a less painful conversation.
It’s not my fault you can only imagine that going a smug direction. That sounds like a you problem. I explicitly said it can come off rude if you do it wrong. Pay attention next time you read something.
